Bi-Mezulot Yam ("In the Depths of the Sea") revives a terrible episode of the exodus of the Jews from Spain (1492). The refugees embarked on pirate vessels, where they were exploited pitilessly. The cupidity of the corsairs is insatiable. After despoiling the Jews of all they own, they sell them as slaves or cast them into the water. This is the lot that threatens to overtake a group of exiles on a certain ship. But the captain falls in love with the daughter of a Rabbi, a maiden of rare beauty. To rescue her companions, she pretends to yield to the solicitations of the captain, who promises to land the passengers safe and sound on the coast. He keeps his word, but the girl and her mother must stay with him. At a distance from the coast, the two women, with prayers to God upon their lips, throw themselves into the sea, to save the girl from having to surrender herself to the desires of the corsair. It is one of the most beautiful of Gordon's poems. Indignation and grief inspire such words as these:
"The daughter of Jacob is banished from every foot of Spanish soil. Portugal also has thrust her out. Europe turns her back upon the unfortunates. She grants them only the grave, martyrdom, hell. Their bones are strewn upon the rocks of Africa. Their blood floods the shores of Asia…. And the Judge of the world appeareth not! And the tears of the oppressed are not avenged!"
What revolts the poet above all is the thought that the downtrodden victims will never have their revenge—all the crimes against them will go unpunished:
"Never, O Israel, wilt thou be avenged! Power is with thy oppressors. What they desire they accomplish, what they do, prospereth…. Spain—did her vessels not set forth and discover the New World, the day thou wast driven out a fugitive and outlaw? And Portugal, did she not find the way to the Indies? And in that far-off country, too, she ruined the land that welcomed thy refugees. Yea, Spain and Portugal stand unassailed!"
But if vengeance is withheld from the Jews, implacable hatred takes possession of all hearts, and never will it be appeased.
"Enjoin it upon your children until the end of days. Adjure your descendants, the great and the little, never to return to the land of Spain, reddened with your blood, never again to set foot upon the Pyrenean peninsula!"
The despair, the grief of the poet are concentrated in the last stanzas, telling how the maiden and her mother throw themselves into the water:
"Only the Eye of the World, silently looking through the clouds, the eye that witnesseth the end of all things, views the ruin of these thousands of beings, and it sheds not a single tear."
His last historical poem, "King Zedekiah in Prison", dates from the period when the poet's skepticism was a confirmed temper of mind. According to Gordon, the ruin of the Jewish State was brought about by the weight given to moral as compared with political considerations. He no longer contents himself with attacking Rabbinism, he goes back to the very principles of the Judaism of the prophets. These are the ideas which he puts into the mouth of the King of Judah, the captive of Nebuchadnezzar. He makes him the advocate of the claims of political power as against the moralist pretensions of the prophets.
The king passes all his misfortunes in review, and he asks himself to what cause they are attributable.